Balfour chief demands "more will and money" on the railways from SRA and government

Balfour Beatty has called on the government and the Strategic Rail Authority (SRA) to come up with the will and the money to restart enhancement work on the rail network.

In an article in today's Guardian newspaper, the group's chief executive, Mike Welton, said the government "must find a way" to finance improvements to the country's railways.

He states that since Railtrack was taken back into public control, projects to enhance the track infrastructure have been starved of money and that the SRA has been investigating how "special purpose vehicles" can be used to allow Private Finance Initiative-style projects, but no solution has been found so far.

"The infrastructure needs money spent on it," Welton told the broadsheet. "The demise of things like Thameslink 2000 is not good for the travelling public. The government has to decide, do they want to spend the money?"

An SRA spokesman was described in the article as "confused" about whether private sector money was involved.

"We're developing [the model]. It's not just a piece of paper," he said.